Morris tribune., 1887-10-19
NEED OF PRACTICAL EDUCATION.
Fathers, Examine the Studies Pursued
by Your SonS-Menta1 Exercise.

Fathers, Examine the Studies Pursued
by Your SonS-Menta1 Exercise.
I have been assured by learned pro-
fessors that the collegiate course is merely
an exercise, useful in forming and strength
ening the mind. Therefore, useless studies
become useful as dumb bells, stifening
tlse mental muscles and imparting tone to
the intelligence. Would not useful studies
and the acquiring of facts needed in the
daily grind to come be equally healthfu
to the mind?
The most our graduates acquire is
barely a smattering of each subject.
Why? Merely because there is not time
to give each branch of study conscientious
and exhaustive research. 1t may be
asked why, then, the number Of studies
is not limited. The answer is simple.
Between the vanity of the parents, who
like to say that their sons are deep in this
abstruse subject or that high sounding
science, and the stubborn conservatism OF
the faculty, retaining Eighteenth century
sentiment in this Nineteenth century OF
practical life, the course is filed with
tares and there is no room for the wheat.
Of what use are Latin and Greek to the
youth who must soon strip in the strug-
gle for bread? The barest excuse is that
~
language. Well? A dictionary will do
as much. Why waste four years in ham
mering verbs and nouns, declensions and
conf cations Tito boy WHO Is destined
afterward to sell coffee or soap? Of what
valuable use is French? 1t will take sew
era1 years to learn, and the requirement
is purely ornamental, and in most cases
not worth q dollar to the future man.
Fathers, examine the studies pursued
| by your sons You will find that you are
spending your money and wasting their
most precious time storing up ghttering
tinsel to the exclusion Of what can benefit
them in the sterner days to come. Cast
| them adrift upon the sea of life without q
| thorough education in some practical sub
ject of value to the world, and which In
needy hour they may coin into bread, and
you are casting them adrift in ships OF
lead without life preserver or spar
aboard. A sunkep rock or storm and
they are lost.
# they need mental exercise let them
! juggle with practical subjects-mechan-
les, bookkeeping, drawing, practical chem
| istry, arithmetic, the English language
| and physics. Let them learn how to keep
accounts, how to handle tools, how to
! build and work an engine, how to detect
| tauu1lerdllOuS III Staples VI CoLAASISo3 III"
to understand the machinery Of the great
practical world-and not learn the yaga-
ries of the land Of dreams.
If you have learned the bent of your
sons mind, confine him strictly to studies
pertaining to his calling and cast all
others away.
Our boys are not fools. They know the
uselessness of half the labors imposed
upon them, and, being Americans, resent
the anareaehing' upon their liberty.
Rather than Latin O" Greek, they take up
the fantasticoes of the poker deck, they
twankle q banjo, and are erudite only in
the latest laws appertaining to trousers
or collar. We neglect to give them
weapons to fight the battle, and they be-
come skulkers in the rear. We turn.
them loose upon the world with no means
for employment; they reply by becoming
idle and profigate, prematurely wasted,
the soul of Saturn in the body of Adonis,
crowded from the race for fortune and
fame by striphngs of humber life, whose
education ran in narrow lines, but was
sturdy and sharp as an ak to hew their
path. Henry Guy Carleton in New York
] World